#22 Let Go… of Handshakes

To my dismay, handshakes are back. The unceremonious return of handshakes happened so suddenly. It took me by rude surprise. I wasn’t ready. After 26 months of enjoying contactless greetings, I had to shake someone’s hand. We were entertaining guests from across the border and this man ambushed me. I had my back to the entrance and did not see them walk in when I heard a hoarse voice say, “hello, I am …” I jerked, then turned around and saw an arm stretched in my direction with an open palm at the end of it that I was meant to grip and shake to exchange salutations. I must’ve frozen. I couldn’t believe my eyes. A beam of sweat formed around my right eyebrow. I did quick maths and concluded that there was no getting out of it. I shook his hand as quickly as I could while I scanned the room for hand sanitisers. They were all placed conspicuously and there was no way for me to make use of the germ-annihilating magic of alcohol without offending my guest. I let my hand hang awkwardly, avoiding contact with other surfaces. It was really difficult to simultaneously hold a convincing smile while I suspended my arm in the air a la Moses during that one war with the Amalekites.

When the guests had left I sprayed sanitiser profusely all over the hand that had broken my longest streak without handshakes. I looked at my right hand again in disbelief. It was dawning on me that indeed, handshakes were back. I am not a fan of handshakes. It has little to do with an innate aversion to touching other humans, but more to do with a cocktail of reasons. Handshakes are for occasions when you’re meeting someone for the first time or meeting them in a formal setting. These are some good examples of social situations where my anxiety is known to make a noticeable appearance. When I’m especially apprehensive, my hands tend to sweat and get all clammy. Nobody wants to touch a damp hand. I also do not want to produce a slimy hand. Believe me, but I am compelled by this social convention. Making a clammy first impression is rather unfortunate. I think I’m a great human but after rubbing slimy hands with me you may be loathe to agree. Now I have a mountain to climb to convince you that I am worth your acquaintance.

Anyway, social life has all but returned to normalcy since the last remnant of the pandemic - the mask mandate - was lifted by government over a month ago. This means that Covid has taken a bow and back to the stage is influenza. The 2022 version of flu is quite bad, almost as if to make up for being MIA since 2020. There was a sweeping flu going around that affected people I work with as well as people I love. I blame handshakes! The same Flu tried me but my guard was way up since I touched that hand. I turned to self medication which is really what this piece about.

The data is coming in that self medication companies are seeing a huge increase in sales. As the world was opening up after covid related lockdowns, demand for medications to treat fevers, flu and coughs grew by 238% this year in Malaysia. They are blaming the war and China but I know it’s handshakes!! In South Africa, Panado hit record high sales this year. The rest of the Adcock Ingram over-the-counter roster got a boost as well. Allergex, Corenza-C and Alcophyllex all posted double digit growth. Every time you shake someone’s hand, it’s an EFT straight to pharmacies and manufacturers of meds. I’m telling you handshakes are making pharmacies rich and leaving us sickly, culminating in thousands of hours of missed work. How is the economy going to recover if we ourselves are languishing on hospital stretchers? Let’s go back to the elegant elbow greeting we learned over the pandemic. Let’s continue to avail sanitisers at points of entry/exit. The vampire cough is a winner too. Let’s keep that going. Do wear a mask when you’re exhibiting flu-like symptoms; or better yet, make self isolation great again. Those were some good times weren’t they? The biggest one, please, for the love of life and all things that are pure, cancel handshakes.

South Africa’s Current Account Deficit

The South African Rand is on the ropes… again. Raise your hand if your domestic currency is pegged 1:1 to the Rand 🙋🏾‍♀️. Guess what, you’re on the ropes too. It has not been a fantastic year by any stretch of the imagination. I don’t feel there is need to retell all the problems we’re dealing with at the moment. The SARB published the Current Account of the Balance of Payments report this week. The report highlighted that a deficit was realised over the second quarter of 2022 to which the markets reacted quite awfully. The Rand shaved off almost a full percentage point immediately after the news to fall to a level about 8% weaker than where it was at the start of the year. This is the first current account deficit to be reported since 2020.

A current account deficit is not on its own a “bad" thing. As it often happens with economic concepts, there’s plenty of nuance. It all depends how it came about. The current account of the balance of payments shows the monies a country spends abroad (outflows) versus monies it receives from the rest of the world (inflows). A current account deficit means outflows were greater than inflows. Why that would be troubling is that it indicates that a country is accumulating liabilities abroad which will have to be financed at some point. If the deficit is arising because of frivolous acquisitions such as a fleet of cars every year in lieu of assets that have long-term productivity gains, then the country’s solvency will soon come into question.

It is typical of emerging economies to run a surplus. This is because international trade is a major component of the current account and emerging economies are often net exporters. Advanced economies are typically importers. They can spend more abroad because they have the money and their currencies are generally stronger than those of their emerging counterparts. Experts will tend to only worry about deep, persistent deficits.

So why is the first deficit in 8 quarters eliciting such a response from the markets? The truth is this, I don’t know. But let me bring back that word, ‘nuance’ again. The South African deficit was due to significant outflows as dividend payments to foreign investors. This was the largest such outflow in 15 years. It looks to me that this particular deficit is indicative of an economy that has been productive and is in a position to reward investors by declaring sizeable dividends. If you look at the current economic climate of ever rising commodity prices from a shareholder’s perspective, big money was made. South Africa is home to some of the largest commodity deposits in the world. Sometimes you just gotta cash in; which is what I suspect is happening. Mr. Market’s negative reaction to these numbers is just him being his usual grumpy self. An alternative explanation less likely to be true is that economic agents are wise to the fact that a deficit indicates net outflows of the domestic currency which in effect means an increased supply of the domestic currency in foreign exchange markets. An oversupply of a good/commodity/currency tends to cheapen it and perhaps we’re witnessing a wise market that is devaluing the Rand in advance. The media will sensationalise this news of course, but in my opinion, this deficit is nothing to worry about.

What I’m Reading

I am reading a book called How To Think More About Sex by one Alain de Botton. I’ll cut to the chase. It is terrible. Worst read of my life but momma ain’t raise a quitter. I read to the bitter end. It’s like when you happen upon a horrific accident and you can’t keep yourself from looking. You find yourself turning your head back towards the scene as you drive past, shaking your head in slow motion as you secretly harbour a fear that you too will one day find yourself in an accident of comparable horror. You drive a little slower hence, with the knowledge that you’ll need medication to keep the nightmares at bay tonight. Or is that just me? Okay.

Sex is a taboo topic. It is not really discussed in the African family; not really discussed in the school curriculum; not really discussed at church; and, not really discussed in workplaces. It’s a mystery how we come to learn anything at all about this perfectly human activity. My biggest fear when I picked up this book was that I couldn’t imagine how the writer would discuss this topic without being vulgar. How can you talk about sex tastefully? Alain started off okayish but as the pages turned he grew in confidence and was outright swearing towards the end; mentioning pornographic websites by name as if to recommend them. I didn’t learn anything from the 200 pages.

I recall when we had to learn about human reproduction in biology class in high school. My biology teacher brought charts showing human reproductive organs to a room of teenagers who couldn’t be caned. What could possibly go wrong? Well, enough for him to bring it to class only once! 😂😂 He physically could not look at any of us in the eye as he was teaching about the female’s reproductive system pointing to features on the chart while speeding through the names of the specific organs. It would be putting it mildly to say that it must have been awkward for him. But I also think it was awkward for us too. We were making lots of noise and randomly cheering throughout the lesson. We were hiding behind the safe refuge of jokes to make the moment more bearable.

I claim to have not learned anything from Alain’s work but he did mention a few interesting things. He talked about how having a certain relationship with a father figure or mother figure can shape your sexual proclivities. It can come from admiration or humiliation. Some men for instance have fetishes (another interesting word) that see them derive sexual pleasure from feeling dominated, linked perhaps to being humiliated as a child by a certain matriarch.

For some, this fetish can go as far as getting turned on by women wearing loafers or pant suits because these items of clothing loosely signal authority. He touched on evolutionary biology stating that sexual attractiveness signals good health. Our good looks are indicators of our genetic destiny. Good health signals good genes and so maybe you would want to reproduce with someone with those characteristics. Then he went back to being crass and the book was thus concluded and I was relieved that my suffering through this Malagwane accident had come to an end.

If anything else happened this week, I missed it. Till next Sunday 👋🏾.